Arcane Pool: As a swift action, Malachi can spend a point from his arcane pool to give any weapon he is holding a +1 enhancement bonus for one minute. His arcane pool currently has a maximum of 7 points.

Spell Combat: While wielding a melee weapon in one hand, and nothing in the other, Malachi can take a full attack and cast a spell as a full round action. The spell cannot have a casting time longer than a standard action, and he takes a -2 penalty on all attack rolls that round. He can choose to take an additional penalty, up to his Intelligence modifier, in order to add the same amount to any concentration checks he makes to cast defensively that round.

Bio:

Malachi’s mother Beryl was the daughter of a minor noble family, of low rank but disproportionate wealth. Desperate for a good marriage, they offered a ludicrous dowry to Luciano Meravenchi, a scion of the depraved, yet well-titled and influential Meravenchi family. Willing to help her family, but less than impressed with her betrothed, Beryl’s friends gave her a wedding gift she would never forget, if not for the reasons they had thought. She spent her last unmarried night with a “real man,” an orc-blooded fellow of negotiable affections.

When Beryl Meravenchi bore a son nine months later, no one thought a thing of it except that Luciano had wasted no time. Young Malachi was given the best of everything; food, toys, tutors, and more. He proved an adept scholar from a young age, and his supposed father was proud of how he took readily to fencing, believing that he had something to do with it. However, the older the boy grew, the clearer it became that he was not Luciano’s son. Luciano himself was, naturally, the last to realize it, remaining cheerfully oblivious until Malachi reached puberty and his tusks grew in.

He went from the lap of luxury to living in the streets overnight. Even so, struggling merely to survive day to day, he never gave up on his dreams of scholarship. If anything, they were stronger now, the gateway to regaining a life worth living. Surviving on odd jobs, begging, minor thuggery, petty theft, and the few gifts that his mother was able to sneak to him under her husband’s jealous eye, Malachi’s strength and cunning were honed on the streets of Sasserine long before he was able to scrape up enough money to pay for a year’s tuition at the Academy.

While he was there, one of the Witchwardens noticed he had a talent for arcane theory, which eventually led to a scholarship, followed by an apprenticeship. He was moved to the House of the Dragon, where he was trained in the way of the Magus, the warrior-wizards used as bodyguards and enforcers by the Witchwardens. After his graduation, however, his step-father, still seething with humiliated rage over raising an orc gigolo’s son, tried to have him killed. Though Malachi survived the attempt, he thought it best to get out of Sasserine for foreseeable future, and boarded a ship with a small group of his classmates, bound for the colony of Farshore… though his decision may have been different, had he heard the news of Luciano’s cousin being elected Lord Mayor of that town.